Bounty Hunter, page 18
Getting down on one knee, blanketed by darkness, Tone drew both his guns. No longer the prey, he was now the hunter. His breath coming fast, he watched the house . . . and waited.
Slow minutes ticked by, and then, one by one, rectangles of light appeared in the windows. Tone allowed himself another smile. The idiots were lighting the gas lamps!
A fine rain started to fall and the wind bustled. There was no moon, no stars, only a gunmetal sky that stretched away on all sides forever.
The back door creaked open.
Tone held his breath. A man appeared and was briefly silhouetted against the light of the kitchen. He let the door close behind him and stepped onto the paver path. The iron blade of the cutlass in his right hand gleamed as he walked warily toward the fence.
Rising to his feet, Tone whispered, “Hey, pardner, you brought a sword to a gunfight.” He took a step forward, half in shadow, half in the dim light from the house windows. “I guess you’re not too familiar with the rules, huh?”
The man froze into an immobile statue. “Mister,” he said, his voice a frog croak, “I’m turning around an’ weighing anchor. For God’s sake, don’t shoot a poor sailorman in the back.”
He opened his fingers, letting go of the cutlass, and it clanged onto the path. Then he turned and walked back toward the house, stiff and jerky as an automaton, expecting a bullet with every step.
Tone let him go, already changing position. He made his way along the fence and stood behind the trunk of a large live oak, keeping his eye on the kitchen door.
Inside the house, the gas lamps were turned off and once again the building was a rectangular block of inkier darkness against the sky.
The kitchen door creaked. . . . Moments slowly passed. . . . Creaked again.
A hoarse whisper. “Billy, you lay athwart o’ me and pay me mind. You others, spread out. If you find Tone bring him to me. By God, I’ll hear him squeal. I’ll gut him like a hog.”
Another man’s voice, a grin in the words. “You’re square, Jack. You got no lights, but you’re square as they come.”
“Belay them pretties, and find Tone, damn you, or more than one cove will be cut this night.”
Blind Jack’s voice, a man who could sense through darkness like a bat.
Tone rubbed the back of his hand across his dry mouth. How many of them were out there?
Then the shadows started to move. . . .
Eight of them at least. Maybe more.
Sprague sent an army, Tone thought to himself. I must be a mighty dangerous hombre.
And he was, that night or any other.
The quiet nerves, muscle and tendon speed and the hand and eye coordination required of a top-rated gunfighter were a gift given to few men, perhaps one in ten thousand or even a hundred thousand. Named men like Hickok, Thompson and Allison were few and rarely encountered. Such men were sudden, sure, dangerous beyond all measure, and best avoided.
Sprague’s doomed sailors were just seconds away from finding this out for themselves. And those who survived this night would, years later, wake in the shrieking darkness, eyes wide, hearts clamoring . . . hearing footsteps.
The shadows drifted closer, crouched men, holding revolvers.
Tone stepped out from behind the oak.
His guns hammered out a harsh, rapid staccato, like an iron bedstead being dragged across a rough pine floor. Tone aimed low. He did not want to hit Langford’s expensive windows or have his bullets crash through nearby houses.
Screams . . . the sound of falling men, then a wild stampede for the kitchen door.
Men jammed in the doorway as they frantically battled to get into the house, away from the deadly gun-fire. Tone, his teeth bared in a snarl, fired into them. A man dropped, then another.
And, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.
Tone moved again, back to the garden shed. He took time to reload his guns from the loose ammunition in his peacoat pocket, then stood still, heeding the sounds of the night.
Around him sudden lights were showing in nearby houses, and a window opened in an upper story and a man yelled, “Hey, what the hell’s going on down there?”
“Police!” Tone called out. “It’s all right. Go back inside.”
Out in Langford’s garden someone groaned in pain. By the kitchen door another coughed, the bubbling hack of a gut-shot man.
Tone waited . . . one minute . . . then another. The lamps in the surrounding houses were being extinguished and a window slammed shut, followed by the click-click of a lock being pushed into place.
He jumped over the fence and walked directly to the kitchen door, stepping over dead men. He lit the gas lamp and went outside again, where elongated rectangles of bluish yellow light stretched across the yard.
It took a while, but he finally located three dead men and two wounded. Blind Jack was not among them. The gut-shot man died as Tone looked down at him. The second wounded man lay with his face in a tangle of yarrow. Tone pushed him over with his foot. The man had a gaping hole in his chest, another in his left shoulder.
He looked up at Tone, his eyes feverish and bright. “Have ye done for me, matey?”
“You can lay to that, sailor.”
“Then damn your soul, John Tone. I wish I’d never set eyes on ye.”
“Lie quiet,” Tone said. “Your time is short.”
“I sail along o’ Cap’n Sprague,” the man said. “He’ll see you tangle your feet in your own guts. That’s what I’m sayin’.”
Tone nodded. “Well, he hasn’t done very well so far, has he?”
“Get away from me,” the dying man said. “I’ve got a course to lay I never charted afore, an’ I’ll be damned if I want you to watch me do it.”
Tone glanced toward the now silent house and when he looked back, the sailor was dead.
He prodded the man’s still body with his toe and shook his head. This would be the third time in one night that the police had taken dead men from the house at 141 Stuart Lane.
It might not be the last.
Chapter 34
“Mr. Tone, this is getting tedious,” Inspector Muldoon said. “Seven dead men carried from this house in one evening is, to say the least, most unusual, and unfortunate to boot.”
He looked at Sergeant Langford. “Well, Thomas, what have you got to say for yourself?”
“Those were Sprague’s men,” Langford said. “Tone was defending himself.”
“Yes, I recognized Billy Charbonneau out there with the dead. He was a bad one and he’d been one of Sprague’s right-hand men for years.”
Muldoon sighed. “I’m going down to the waterfront to speak with Sprague, see if I can get to the bottom of this. He’ll deny everything, of course.”
“Please give him this, Inspector,” Tone said. “Tell him it’s from me.”
Muldoon looked at the Bible page in his hands. Tone had scored out his name and has substituted “Lambert Sprague.”
“He’ll know what it means,” Tone said.
“I’ve heard of this, but never seen one before,” Muldoon said, looking hard at Tone. “It’s given only to those who break the pirate oath.”
“I know,” Tone said.
“Did you take such an oath, Mr. Tone?”
“I did, before I fully knew what was involved.”
Now it was Langford’s turn to feel the full force of Muldoon’s icy stare. “I must say, Sergeant, for an officer of the law you keep some strange company, Mr. Tone included.”
“It’s all part of the job, sir,” Langford said defiantly.
“And I believe John Tone will make a fine police officer one day.”
Muldoon was unimpressed. “That remains to be seen, doesn’t it? No one knows better than you, Sergeant, that the standards of our department have become very high in recent years.”
Langford seemed to consider that a conversation stopper and said nothing.
The inspector seemed to enjoy the pause his words had caused, then said finally, “Well, I’ll root out Sprague and perhaps scare him into letting go of this foolish pirate-oath business. And perhaps I can get him to name the date and time of his peace meeting.”
Muldoon smiled. “We might be able to work with that, Thomas. Catch all the scoundrels in one place.” The smile slipped a couple of notches. “Of course, catching is one thing, charging with a criminal offense is quite another. It seems that when it comes to the police, the entire population of the Barbary Coast is blind, deaf and dumb.”
“Indeed, sir,” Langford said, his face betraying nothing.
Muldoon sighed again, this time more deeply. “Well, then, I’ll be on my way.”
“Let me accompany you, sir,” Langford said.
“Sergeant, I’ve worked the waterfront before and I have an escort of two burly officers, so I’ll be quite safe.” He shook his head. “No, you stay here and keep an eye on Mr. Tone. There’s mischief afoot and those brigands could come back in force.”
“Muldoon won’t find Sprague,” Langford said, pouring coffee for him and Tone. “He’ll sound the bugle and charge all over the place like Custer at the Little Big-horn and get nowhere. Sprague will be holed up ahead of his meeting tomorrow.”
“Tonight,” Tone corrected. “It’s almost three in the morning.”
“Yes . . . tonight.” The big cop was silent for a while, thinking. Then he said, “Are we doing the right thing, Tone?”
“You mean are you doing the right thing? I plan to kill Sprague, with or without your consent.”
“Damn it, man, the law—”
“I care only about one law, and that’s the law of survival. I have to kill Sprague before he kills me, simple as that.”
Langford was fingering the star on his chest, and Tone said, “Take it off if you want, but on or off, it won’t change a thing. A couple of hours ago Sprague came close. Next time he might do a lot better.”
“You did well, Tone. Five men dead, shooting in the dark like you did. You burned Sprague real good.”
Tone made no answer and the sergeant lifted bleak eyes to his face. “It’s the only way, isn’t it?”
“Yes, the only way. I kill him, Langford, then you live with it.”
“Live with it . . . ordering a man’s death. If you think about it, I’m no better than Sprague.”
Tone smiled. “I don’t need to think about it. On your worst day, you’re a better man than he’ll ever be. Why should it bother your conscience to kill a rat?”
Langford nodded. “He’s a man who deserves killing.”
“Then let it go and sleep content.”
The sergeant laughed. “On the floor? I don’t have a bed any longer.” He groaned. “Hell, I’m getting too old for this.”
Tone woke as the thin dawn light bladed through the kitchen window. Outside, birds were singing, but the wind drove rain against the glass panes with the sound of a kettledrum.
He pushed the blankets aside and rose to his feet and worked out the kinks in his back. From the parlor Langford’s soft snoring provided a homey counterpoint to the rain. The big cop had stretched out between a couple of chairs and seemed comfortable enough.
They’d heard nothing from Inspector Muldoon.
After he put the coffee on to boil, Tone stepped to the window and glanced outside. The garden looked peaceful, the flowers delighting in the rain, and there was nothing to suggest that it was where five men had died in a gunfight a few hours before.
As the coffee boiled, Tone cleaned and oiled his guns, then reloaded. The .38s were double-action revolvers, but by long habit he left an empty chamber under the hammers. If he couldn’t do the coming night’s work with ten shots, an extra two wouldn’t make any difference.
He poured coffee, lit a cigar and relaxed at the kitchen table, allowing the new morning to become one with him and him with it.
Ten minutes later, as Tone was pouring himself a second cup of coffee, someone burst violently through the front door of the house.
Tone grabbed his guns from the table, stuck his cigar in his teeth, and waited.
A few moments later, Inspector Muldoon staggered into the kitchen. Behind him a worried coachman stood in the doorway, wringing his hands.
“I offered to take him to the hospital, but he fair insisted on coming here,” the cabbie said. “He’d brook no argument, you can set store by that.”
Laying his guns on the table, Tone helped Muldoon into a chair. The front of the inspector’s tunic was covered with blood.
“Shotguns,” the man whispered, grabbing Tone by the front of his shirt, “up close. Officers Tom Tibbles and Henry Ward . . . both dead.”
Suddenly Langford was in the room, holding up his uniform pants with his left hand, his revolver in the other. “In the name of God, Inspector, what happened?”
“I’m done for, Thomas. They’ve done for me at last.”
“What happened?” Langford demanded again.
“I bungled it. Two officers dead because I bungled it.”
Langford looked at Tone. “Get him a glass of whiskey.”
“No, no whiskey,” Muldoon said weakly. “I’m a temperate man.”
“It will do you good,” the sergeant said. He turned to the agitated cabbie. “Go find a doctor, any doctor, and bring him here. Don’t just stand there gaping, man. Go!”
The cabbie touched his hat and quickly left.
Tone put the glass to Muldoon’s lips. The inspector drank a little, then coughed and pushed the whiskey away.
“I’ve sent for a doctor, Inspector,” Langford said. “Now tell me what happened.”
Tone unbuttoned Muldoon’s tunic and the shirt underneath. One look told him all he needed to know. The man had taken a shotgun blast full in the chest and his life was measured in minutes.
“We searched for Sprague for hours,” Muldoon said, his eyes already glazing as death stepped closer to him. “Couldn’t find him . . . anywhere. His taverns . . . house . . . no one knew anything. ‘Gone away,’ was all they’d say. Then . . . just before first light, we heard a woman scream in an alley. We investigated . . . three men . . . shotguns . . . fired on us.”
Muldoon was struggling to stay alive, but his face was gray and he suddenly looked old. “Woman . . . in a cloak . . . she fired at us. Laughed . . . Thomas, she laughed. . . .”
“Try some more whiskey, Inspector,” Tone said.
This time the dying man drank deeply. He managed a pained smile. “Very good. Maybe I should have tried that . . . earlier.” He looked at Langford. “Thomas, I crawled out of the alley after . . . they were gone.” His eyes took on a wild look. “The devil . . . the woman is the devil . . . cloak . . . laughing . . .”
Muldoon’s mind was starting to wander along a misty roadway that led to eternity. He struggled to talk. “Sprague’s work . . . didn’t want me to get close to . . . to what he’s planning. . . .”
He reached out a hand to Langford and the big man took it. “You . . . you’re a good officer . . . Thomas. . . . Fine . . . officer . . .”
Then he smiled and died.
Langford held his inspector’s hand for a long while, as though trying to help him along the road he had to take. Then he gently laid Muldoon’s hand in his lap.
Tone searched his mind for the right words, couldn’t find them, and let his silence do his talking. There were tears in Langford’s eyes, a strange thing to see in that tough, rough-hewn face.
Finally the sergeant said, his voice thick as molasses, “He was the most useless inspector in the San Francisco Police Department—didn’t know his ass from his elbow.” He dashed the tears from his eyes with the back of one huge hand. “Rest in peace, Muldoon. My friend.”
A young doctor arrived a few minutes later. He could only say what Tone and Langford already knew, that the inspector had died from a shotgun wound. But then he said, “A secondary bullet wound to his left shoulder hastened, but did not cause his death.”
Tone was surprised. He had not seen that injury. The doctor pointed it out to him, a round, inflamed hole made by a large-caliber bullet. “I’d guess a .45 or .44,” the doctor said, “fired from fairly close range.”
Chastity Christian’s derringer was a .44. She was the woman in the cloak who had shot Muldoon, then laughed as men died.
Tone vowed to himself that after tonight she would never laugh again.
Chapter 35
Night came to the Barbary Coast and the old round of business, pleasure, folly, vice and violent crime went merrily on.
Already, and still before six o’clock, two Frenchmen got into a duel with rapiers over the favors of a whore. The fight ended with a skewering, a dead man and the sobbing victor dragged off to the calaboose. In the basement of the La Scala Hotel on Drum Street, a man named the Shanghai Chicken, who fancied himself a prizefighter, took on a pugilist by the name of Soapy McAlpine. Before a well-heeled crowd, the Shanghai Chicken was defeated in eighteen rounds. Minus part of his nose and right ear—the other was badly chawed—he later claimed he lost the fight because Soapy landed an illegal low blow that “damn near exploded my balls.” But all would have ended peacefully enough had not the Shanghai Chicken’s sweetheart, perhaps fretting over possible damage to a part of her lover dear to her, obtained a revolver from behind the bar of the Sailor’s Haven tavern and proceeded to demonstrate her annoyance at Soapy by pumping three bullets into his brisket.
As John Tone prepared to leave Langford’s house, Soapy was languishing at death’s door in St. Mary’s Hospital while his unrepentant assailant sat in her police cell and sang the latest hit ballad, “After the Ball,” to all who would listen.
“I’ll walk with you, Tone,” Langford said. He seemed uneasy, a man who was not at peace with himself. “When we reach the waterfront, we’ll go our separate ways.”
Tone shouldered into his peacoat. “Pity, isn’t it, how things work out. We know who the criminals are, what they’ve done, yet we can’t just go and arrest them or rid the city of their shadows permanently.”
